Techland has apologised for the error, which we imagine rated highly on its inhouse cringe-ometer, and on Facebook and the official Dead Island web site said that it was a mistake.

"We deeply regret that an incorrect version of Dead Island was inadvertently made available to players on Steam launch in North America," it wrote.

"We are very sorry for any issues you may have experienced while playing the game - the correct, patched version will be made available to North American players ASAP."

US players were the first to get the release of the critic-dividing game title and Techland promised that when it reaches other territories it will be the full release build.

"Other territories are not affected by this situation, the fully patched game will be available on Friday as announced," it said.

The Dead Island web site goes into a little more detail and explains that the fixes in the final release are now available on Steam. Again, it took the opportunity to apologise, although with a little more colour.

"We are deeply sorry for the inconvenience caused to fans who wanted to spend their day crushing some zombie skulls," wrote the firm. "Thank you very much for your continued patience and support and we are completely committed to ensuring that you have an excellent time with our game."

Although the wrong version will be replaced for users, they will have a chance to carry on from where they left of thanks to a small patch that lets them select their old chapter when starting a new game.

Doing this should let them jump to the place they were at before they got annoyed and stopped playing. We suspect that some players might want to go back to the beginning however.

Affected players are also expected to receive some sort of "make up" reward from the firm. Details of this have not been released yet.

What has been released is the list of fixes, and boy do they make the initial release look woeful and even more embarrassing for a launch day title that so far has received mixed reviews.

For example, we learn that maps now synchronise when players join, games filter correctly in the lobby, enemies spawn correctly and not infinitely, and health and stamina bars for enemies now display correctly, .

Scores for the game from reviewers have ranged from a terrible sounding three out of ten to an almost unmissable eight out of ten. µ